Topic: Yahtzee's review of Super Mario Maker left me feeling oddly conflicted...

For those not familiar, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is an Australian British games critic living in Australia who narrates these fast-paced, run-on-sentence, obscenity-and-vulgarity-filled reviews of modern (and sometimes classic) video games. He's usually extremely harsh on games and their companies, even the ones he likes, and it's become sort of a badge of honor to be reviewed by him. His reviews are usually very funny while also making some good points.

So when I watched his review of Super Mario Maker last night, I came away from it feeling pretty conflicted. On the one hand, he has some points: Take the Mario franchise, strip it down to lowest common denominators, gussy it up with some pretty UI and hand it to your fans as if to say "Here, you're so smart, you do it!". When he puts it the way he did in this review, it kinda makes me feel pretty silly to be so into this game - especially to be hoping that people enjoy the levels I'm creating.

But then I think, "To heck with what he thinks! I'm having fun, dammit!" Ultimately, isn't that the most important thing about gaming? There's something about SMM that makes me feel like a kid again as I play it. (I'm old enough to remember when the MCP was just a chess program.)

I think this is the first review of his that I've watched where I've come away feeling more conflicted than amused. Even his scathing reviews of other Nintendo games that I really liked were merely funny, so I'm not sure why this one gets under my skin as much as it does. Is it that I've had a brief honeymoon with what I thought was a very cool game, only to realize it's just a clever marketing tool? Or is it that I already know everything every games company does is a clever marketing tool and I'm just annoyed that Yahtzee feels he has to bash me over the head with that fact?

Ultimately, it doesn't make me want to stop playing SMM. Every 100-Mario Challenge is a new opportunity to find some real gems that are genuinely fun to play, and forums like this one foster a sense of community that brings together the kind of gamers I like to game with.

What are your thoughts on this?

Eh, it's a review that any other person with do on how to enjoy a game (pro or not). Like you said though "Ultimately, it doesn't make me want to stop playing SMM"

If you like a game Yahtzee reviews, you will disagree with him. If you haven't played a game he reviews, you will probably agree with him.

He's always had a rather negative opinion of Nintendo as a company (Comparing it to Disney as a soulless corporation content to rest on its laurels and take stupid children's money), and it's the worst with Mario, the flagship series. I generally don't take his reviews of Nintendo games seriously, since it was clear from the outset he formed the opinion without any basis and after actually playing many of Nintendo's games for the purpose of reviews, he has formed a much more balanced opinion, finding that many of the series actually have merit.
But he still sees the non-RPG Mario games as Disney style soulless, lazy evil, and with Mario Maker it's really easy to underline the "lazy" part.

I see reviews as a simple thing: an analysis. This analysis, if done right, can be a very useful method to gauge a games' quality, and also to point out both flaws and highlights and put them into words.
However, people tend to really overreact to reviews. A negative review barely ever says that a game isn't fun (except when it's really awful), or that it's wrong to like it despite being flawed (points at Metroid: Other M), just like a very positive review not always means that disliking the game is wrong (points at Bayonetta 2). Instead pointless arguments are thrown around to justify ones own viewpoint, instead of just accepting that no review is universally right, and also doesn't tell people what to like and what to loathe. It's mainly a viewpoint that may help with the decision of whwther to get a game or not, but it's never an accurate reflection of the game, just a rundown of what kind of game it is - this rundown, however, doesn't take certain preferences into consideration, so it's impossible to apply to larger groups of people.

In the specific case of Yahtzee's SMM review: it's pretty obvious to me that the game is more marketing than substance, which is basically a rule of thumb for editor-centric games and DIY games. But stop for a moment and ponder the simplest of all questions:

Are you having fun?

Ones own answer to this questions is all the review needed to decide whether to keep playing or not. If a review makes you doubt your own decision, you need to stop right at that point and reflect on what changed your mind. Did you simply have enough fun to not notice or ignore the flaw(s)? Is it a "can't unsee" instance because you were playing the game differently before?
Overall, there's no need to worry about it. Reviews are reviews, fun is fun. Both are somewhat subjective, neither is universally applicable. End of story.

@Kaze_Memaryu, @steamhare, @Bass_X0: I realize all of that for reviews in general, and everyone who's familiar with him knows that Yahtzee's abrasive style is done more for laughs and fun than necessarily because he believes it all seriously. He's come out as saying that he really likes some of the games he's bashed to bits in his reviews. And I know better than to let a single review sway my opinion unnecessarily.

The point of my post was to simply mention that I wasn't sure what it was about this specific review that made me feel so conflicted, and I was wondering if anyone else had a similar reaction to that review. Sorry if I didn't make this clear.

In this case, it may be that rather than bashing the game, Yahtzees review bashes the people who want to play it to an extent. Since he's telling you that Nintendo has pulled the wool over your eyes by giving you what, in all likelihood, is exactly what you wanted, it makes his review seem like more of a personal attack.

I honestly agree with him, Mario Maker is in fact a novelty. It doesn't make it any less fun however.

But it's just a review, glad to see this thread has /yet/ to derail into an argument.

Everything Nintendo or any other company does is for money, but that doesn't make them greedy, does it? Because they have to make money, its a necessity. Humans need food to survive, but just because we do something to put food on the table, does that make us gluttonous?

Yes, Mario Maker was cost-effective and required minimal level design, but money is the fuel that runs a business, and it doesn't take away from the fact that Nintendo thought we would enjoy it. There's nothing scandalous or disreputable about it, and they made the game really well, didn't they?

I'm not.

Isn't Yahtzee British?

@Jazzer94: According to Wikipedia, he was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, so yeah, that makes him British. He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia. (So I was technically incorrect by saying he's Australian.)

So it's only level design that costs money when developing a game? Developing a user interface that's so seemingly easy but still powerful is not that is easily made.

You're not usually supposed to take him seriously, but he did highlight why I just have no fun with the game. All the featured levels are just "don't press anything" or "LOL LOOK HOW HARD THIS LEVEL IS". It's annoying. That and playing a bunch of random levels in succession, which are, admittedly, pretty limited in things like boss fights and what not, gets old for me real fast.

Couple that with the fact that I don't find much fun in creation of levels and I'm out $60 for a game I don't really touch.

Now before you all come at me saying I'm an idiot and how my opinion is wrong:

The game is well made, and I'm super happy that people are loving it more than I. It's something that people have been wanting for a while, and I think it has lots of room to grow as a game. For example, possibly allowing people to upload entire worlds? String em' together to make little mini campaigns.

So yeah. in this case, I agree with Yahtzee on some of his realistic points.

There have been many ploys used by Nintendo over the years to get (and at times - illegally) your money and your personal details. Of all, Super Mario Maker has probably been the cleanest and fairest, and one that the users can actually enjoy.
So, of all things Nintendo should legitimately be accused of, frankly Super Mario Maker is the most cretinous.

@Operative: It's always the case that not every game will appeal to everyone. I certainly have no problem with people who don't enjoy the game, and its limitations are VERY limiting. I'm disappointed with the way they handled level advertising - the system, like most such systems, suffers from extreme popularity bias. You basically can't get noticed there unless you're already popular.

To some extent, the level-sharing database here on NL suffers from the same problem, though the forum at least gives us the ability to interact with other level makers and give and receive real, useful feedback.

I do completely agree with Yahtzee on some of his points for SMM - had I been on the project, I would have tried to do some of the things (particularly the level sharing aspect) differently. But even with that, I'm one of those OCD-type gamers that grew up on and appreciates the type of game that Mario is at its core, so wading through a bunch of crap to find a genuinely good level is worth it to me.

He's right. People are having fun with the game, but its a concept that Nintendo neglected for decades, and then offered in a very stripped down sense. If it had competition it would be blown out of the water, but because it's made for Nintendo fans, and Nintendo fans weren't ever given anything like it before for Mario games, people enjoy it. As a level building game its pretty damn archaic compared to what's out there, but it has Nintendo characters in it, so it's popular. It speaks volumes that fans made comparable and sometimes even better products in the genre than Nintendo has years before they even decided to.

To put it in another context, it's the kind of thing that people get to do for dozens of games on PC with mods. For free. With more options.

I like Zero Punctuation a lot and more or less agreed on this one. I just sold my Mario Maker after having played it for a month. Just kinda got to the point where it felt like I'd experienced every type of level the public was capable of (and come to the conclusion that crowdfunding creativity is a very limited concept).

He seems to be taking the ease of course design Nintendo has laid out for granted. People start making courses and often don't take a moment to think about how great the creation process is. It is extremely well crafted, so much in fact it often gets overlooked. One could see this as a huge unintended nod towards Nintendo.
There is also no lack of content in Super Mario Maker, don't expect the best the game has to offer to be spoon fed to you! There is plenty of course creativity to go around and challenges and competitions within the community. If you're not checking out what this game has to offer outside of the game itself, while still very much enjoyable, you are missing out on a huge part that makes Super Mario Maker such a fun phenom right now.

I've put 40+ hours into the game since its release. It's fun.